Nandikar’s theatre-in-education projects have multiplied exponentially in terms of enrolment. Its five latest school productions mobilize a veritable army numbering 230 in all. Nandikar’s forte lies in drilling this potential anarchy into battalions of disciplined performers, who, simultaneously, have great fun. The collective ebullience overflows such that at moments one prays for some quietude on stage!

The directors’ chosen mode is the dramatization of fiction. Parthapratim Deb takes up Tagore’s parable, Totakahini, adapted by Koushik Roychowdhury for Samatat Sanskriti, and gives it a colourful rendition with a particularly difficult part for Asmita Ghosh as the parrot, who sings while flying around, crushed by the weight of education. Susanta Mondal commendably draws the speech- and hearing-impaired pupils of Badhir Vidyabhavan, also from Uttarpara, into theatre with Abanira Keman Thake?, based on Oliver Twist. For Laban Hrad Vidyapith, however, Debsankar Halder writes an original, Gorababur Swapna, balancing a boy’s need for leisure and study, jointly directed by him and Deb.

Besides working with institutions, the Nandikar Children’s Ensemble adopted 60 kids on each of two productions. In Satyajit Ray’s Pil-pil-pil, Mondal organizes the little ones into groups of cats, egrets, ducks, parrots and ants to stress the bonds of family life. Sunil Gangopadhyay’s Satyi Rajputra, dramatized by Swatilekha Sengupta, gives Sohini Sengupta scope to choreograph large numbers in a tale about the kidnapping of a rich boy who escapes with poor peasants’ help. In all these plays, music and dance contribute substantially to the spectacle.

It is instructive to compare other pedagogic methods. Sanskar Rang Toli, National School of Drama’s theatre-in-education company, employs adult professionals to enact young people’s theatre. Their Kitabon Men Halchal, a Hindi version of Alice Woster’s Hubbub on the Bookshelf, is a clever fantasy of individual bookworms eating into single volumes, though admonished by a senior of their species that they should taste a variety of books and subjects. Adaptor-director Abdul Latif Khatana capitalizes on the requirement for imaginative costumes while conveying the message regarding the dangers of limited knowledge and tunnel vision in specialization.

Then there is the Grips Theatre formula from Berlin, which favours tackling real-life problems instead of unreal worlds. Lalit Kala Kendra Gurukul, or Centre for Performing Arts, University of Pune, presented Tu Dost Mahya in Marathi, written and directed by Vibhavari Deshpande. She addresses the phenomenon of latchkey kids who must entertain themselves because both parents work for a living. Here the daughter (spiritedly acted by Renuka Kulkarni) rejects a village cousin initially because of his country manners, but gradually befriends him. Besides solving loneliness, Deshpande bridges the rural-urban divide for the young and advises adults to tend to their children.